NEW DELHI
After the Supreme Court’s order, a non-functional anti-smog tower in Connaught Place here has been restarted after seven months of being locked up, as the Delhi AQI remains in the poor to severe category.
A member of the team said that the plant had been re-operationalised as per the direction of the Supreme Court, and cleaning of the equipment and rooms was being carried out. “The facility was shut down in April. All the fans are now functional and trials are being carried out. We will gradually increase the speed of fans,” he added.
The Supreme Court has pulled up Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) chairman Ashwani Kumar for shutting down the smog tower. The Supreme Court has called the situation “ludicrous” and directed the DPCC chairman to be present before it. However, Arvind Kejriwal on Tuesday recommended to the Lieutenant Governor the immediate suspension of Ashwani Kumar for “arbitrarily halting” the operation of a large smog tower installed at Connaught Place two years ago to check pollution. Sources said the file recommending the suspension of Kumar, a senior IAS officer and principal secretary (home) in the Delhi government, has been sent to Lieutenant Governor Vinai Kumar Saxena.
The 24-meter tall smog tower had the capacity to clean 1,000 cubic meters of air within a one-kilometer radius per second. Equipped with 40 fans and 5,000 air filters, the tower sucks in polluted air and releases filtered air. However, according to some media reports, the efficacy, submitted by IIT-Bombay on 30 September, found that only a surrounding area 20m away had the most improvement in air quality, with the gains dropping the farther someone went from it. At best, roughly 500m away and in a downwind direction, there was an 18% improvement in the amount of dust and ultrafine particulate matter, but these gains were less in a direction that was upwind from the tower. In 2021, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal inaugurated the country’s first “smog tower”, an experimental setup worth Rs 20 crore, to purify air.